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Why We All Gave Up on Smart Homes

Slidebean

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Smart homes were supposed to be the future.

Hollywood promised us houses that just worked.
Instead, we got disconnected apps, broken automations, voice assistants that fail basic commands, and a graveyard of abandoned smart home gadgets collecting dust in drawers.
So what happened?
In this episode, Caya dives into the hidden history of smart homes — from 1970s protocols like X10 to Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread, Matter, Alexa, HomeKit, and the modern chaos of incompatible ecosystems.
We break down why smart homes feel so unreliable, why even simple automations fail constantly, why companies keep abandoning devices, and why the “Hollywood smart home” turned into a maintenance nightmare for normal people.
But this isn’t just a rant.
After weeks of testing, rebuilding, and going way too deep into the rabbit hole, Caya finds something that actually works: a local, open-source setup built around Home Assistant and local AI.
This video is part history lesson, part tech breakdown, and part warning about the future of connected devices.
Because maybe the biggest problem with smart homes…
was never the technology.

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📚 Sources & References
Survey on smart home frustration
https://www.digitalinformationworld.c...
Crestron TPS-6000 documentation
https://ia801904.us.archive.org/8/ite...
History of Crestron touchscreens
https://www.strata-gee.com/building-o...
X10 / Powerline communication explanation
https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/p...
IoT funding boom data
https://www.cbinsights.com/research/i...
Lowe’s Iris shutdown coverage
https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/...
WiFi / Zigbee / Bluetooth spectrum overlap
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/W...
Amazon Alexa Zigbee support docs
https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/do...
Phoebus cartel history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus...
Home Assistant 10-year history
https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/20...
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#SmartHome #HomeAssistant #Alexa #Matter #Zigbee #HomeAutomation #IoT #TechExplained #ArtificialIntelligence #OpenSource #HomeKit #SmartDevices #Slidebean #FutureTech #TechHistory #Emergent #VibeCoding #NoCode #AIAppBuilder

20 Comments

@slidebean Creator 4 months ago Pinned

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@bridge_studio 4 months ago

YOU: Siri, call the police there is a criminal trying to get into my house:
SIRI: Opening door now.

@robertmatthews4285 4 months ago

Between privacy, corporate greed and lack of costumer focus, I just don’t need what these companies call a smart home.

@jakuth99 4 months ago

Ngl, I was definitely thinking about home assistant the whole time. Also I'm reminded of that meme about how tech enthusiasts have a smart home while someone who understands tech has a printer and they keep a gun trained on it in case it makes a noise they don't like

@michaelkoelbl4004 4 months ago

That reminds me of the XKCD "Standards" comic:
"Situation: There are 14 competing standards"
"14?! Ridiculous - we need one univerrsal standard that covers everyone's use cases"
"Situation: There are 15 competing standards"

@WeAreBikeScouts 4 months ago

Why would I want to have five apps to do something I can do with one wall switch? The problem with most tech companies that sell their products as "solving a problem" is that the only problem they actually want to solve is how to make money.

@jacobD643 4 months ago

31:15 'there's no bezos spying on me" the smart phone in your pocket begs to differ

@selinov 4 months ago

After 2-3 decades of living the tech-life, I realized I didn't need/want a “smart” home. There's a point at which getting up to turn off the lights is the healthier option for me. Convenience became too expensive, financially and medically, to continue pursuing.

@Sleepy3103-Gaming 2 months ago

The first 3/4 of this video I was like, bro...... home assistant. Lol.

@RelativisticVelocity 4 months ago

Most engineers want interoperable, reliable, robust tech, it gets them excited. It is always the suits and MBAs that want things the way they are now. Hence the reason Home Assistant exists, a project engineers actually want, enough so that they do it on their own free time.

@jasont80 4 months ago

I've been a Home Assistant enjoyer for many years. I love it! Every light in my house, every speaker, every camera, every devices, and nearly every reasonable appliance is on my own no-internet-access smart-home network.

@planned_obsolescence 4 months ago

I'm an electrical engineer and I really enjoy smarthome stuff, but I avoid the" simple" off the shelf solutions by default. Also, if it can't be manually controlled, or at least without internet, it's a no go.

I guess it's key to keep your smarthome as dumb as possible, stick to just one hub (preferably Homey) and one protocol, avoid everything that needs a proprietary app. Also, becoming an engineer who is able to design your own electronics, really helps in the process.

@BreeBadger 3 months ago

Oh no. You misunderstood. Amazon wasn't selling them at a loss in the hopes that you would buy something from Amazon through them. Amazon was collecting marketing data on you. That they could then use to either sell you things on Amazon or sell to other companies. That is true with every "smart" appliance and device that is connected to the internet that you own.

I'll never understand how ppl still don't understand that basic fact about literally every "smart" appliance and app on their phones - and yes, that does include the paid apps as well as the "free" ones.

@marcocartalli7503 4 months ago

One thing that Technology Connections taught me about the Phoebus cartel, is that it wasn't primarily to sell more lightbulbs, it was surely a part of it, but the main focus was making the bulbs brighter. A tungsten filament can make more light if you reduce its lifespan, and in fact 2500 hrs bulbs kept existing as "long life" bulbs, but they just weren't as bright and consequently as useful, seen that the primary focus of a light bulb is to make light.

@CyberCyclist3460 3 months ago (edited)

I did my own "smart home" implementation that doesn't involve buying products that are tied to a subscription or selling my personal data. As others here have pointed out, it's solving a problem that doesn't exist.

@michalbrzezanski 4 months ago

You and Tom Scott both uploading a video about smart homes within a few hours - nice combo

@gorkagarcia8715 3 months ago

2:02 So you are the founder of a tech company and make videos about tech, but assume we are more tech savvy than you because we watch your videos? Hahaha

@DennisSchmitz 4 months ago

A smarthome that relies on voice commands isn’t smart. Automations, fully local with fall backs is how it should be.

@Cakebattered 4 months ago

As someone who sold and installed Crestron, systems by companies like Crestron, Savant, AMX, or even Control4 is miles ahead of any DIY system or off the shelf system. That said, Home Assistant does a great job for the hobbyiest at a fraction of the cost. The UX/UI of Home Assistant is its weak point. I haven't seen a Home Assistant UI, that was as good as a base level Control4 UI from 15 years ago.

@besknighter 4 months ago

Who would think that companies trying to garden wall everything and still charge way too much every month would yield the worst possible scenario for smart home. I'd never guess that the opposite was best: having free and open source standards that any hardware and software companies could adhere and help improve. Smart homes could be cool and easy and frictionless. Corporate ruined it.